Rob Cesternino
The wisecracking Amazon mastermind who flipped alliances at will and still had people thanking him for it.
Known for
Rob started the Amazon on the all-male Tambaqui tribe, cracking jokes, sizing up who planned to play honorably and deciding he would not be one of them. After a swap moved him to Jaburu, he built quiet pacts with Deena Bennett and with Matthew von Ertfelda, whom he schooled in strategy, and then spent the back half of the game steering nearly every vote. He took out Roger Sexton by making the men look united, cut Deena, formed a new bloc to blindside Alex Bell, then partnered with Heidi Strobel and Jenna Morasca to ambush swing vote Christy Smith. Even Heidi and Jenna, furious after Alex's blindside, ended up thanking him for saving them. His luck ran out at the final three, when Jenna beat him in the last immunity and chose Matthew over him.
All-Stars put him on a Chapera tribe run by Rob Mariano, who became his rival. His loafing at camp didn't help, and at Chapera's first Tribal Council he was voted out unanimously as a strategic threat.
Background: Survivor Wiki
Season by season
Photos and logos: CBS
Seasons played, finishing positions, day counts, jury status, ages and hometowns come from the contestant table in each season's Wikipedia article, cross-checked against the series overview before publication.
Sources (4)
- “Survivor: The Amazon,” Wikipedia, accessed September 28, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor:_The_Amazon.
- “Survivor: All-Stars,” Wikipedia, accessed September 28, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor:_All-Stars.
- “List of Survivor (American TV series) episodes,” Wikipedia, accessed September 25, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Survivor_(American_TV_series)_episodes.
- “Rob Cesternino,” Survivor Wiki, accessed September 28, 2026, https://survivor.fandom.com/wiki/Rob_Cesternino.